8174 Book(s) Related to the summer of broken rules read online

They paid me a fortune to authenticate a masterpiece. It took eight seconds to know it was a forgery — and eight more to understand I was the forgery they'd hired.

The brushwork was my great-grandmother's. The woman they let die in a county ward, calling herself a liar for daring to say the paintings were hers.

The Ashford name sits on three centuries of art, scholarship, and law. None of it is theirs. He stole her words. His wife stole her paintings. They built a dynasty on a woman they erased — and never learned her blood runs in me too.

I'm the lawyer they brought in to seal one more theft. I said no.

By the time they remember her name, they won't have one left to sign.

My husband Michael's father and my own father shared the same name—Robert. His was Robert Carter; mine, Robert Smith. I once thought it a sweet coincidence, until that 3 AM phone call turned this quirk of fate into a living nightmare.
The nursing home called to say Robert Carter had died, but when Michael returned from his business trip, he assumed it was my father who had passed. "Old Robert's finally gone," he smirked. "Should've moved him to the cheaper nursing home ages ago." Can you believe it? His own father—the man who'd left him an inheritance—and there he was, helping his medical intern mistress cover up malpractice, dismissing the death as "just some useless old man."
He has no idea he's protecting his father's killer. No clue I've seen through his cold-bloodedness all along.
I wonder, when the truth finally hits him, how will this absurd tragedy end?

I was "Ghost," the undefeated legend of the underground racing circuit. To uncover the truth behind the tragic fall that left my sister, Sylvia, in a coma, I disguised myself as a timid, pathetic scholarship student and infiltrated Spencer Academy—an elite world ruthlessly ruled by old-money families and the hockey dynasty.

I thought my petty revenge was flawless when I slashed a bully's tire with a razor blade hidden in my sleeve. But I was caught red-handed by the academy's most feared predator: Rowan King, the "Tyrant of the Ice."

He was Sylvia's rumored boyfriend. More importantly, he was the last person to see her that night.

With a single glance, he shattered my "good girl" facade. He knew my true identity as the street racer "Ghost," and he knew exactly why I had sneaked into his school.

I should have treated him as my prime suspect. But between his fiercely dominant advances and his reckless, deadly protection, he was making my heart race entirely out of control...

I woke up, and my world collapsed.

Lying next to me was Sebastian—the golden boy, the heir to the Rhodes empire, and the nemesis who has tormented me for twenty years.

I fled. I swore to take that night to my grave. If I kept my mouth shut, no one would know.

But Fate has a twisted sense of humor. Five weeks later, two red lines on a pregnancy test slapped me in the face. I’m pregnant. And the father isn’t just my childhood nightmare. He’s the man who just bought my company. My new boss.

I tried to hide. He hunted me down. He scares off my dates. He tramples my pride. He invades my life like a tyrant. He mocks me in public, yet destroys anyone who touches me in private.

"Nancy, did you really think you could escape?" He pins me against the wall, his eyes dark, that familiar scent of cedar suffocating me. "Admit it. You hate me, but you need me."

I had to claim Caleb tonight.

I had paid a six-figure premium to contract a high-level werewolf mate from the nation’s top "Fated Mates" agency. I had chosen him for his elite stats, the "absolute submission" guaranteed in his file, and most importantly, a face that could put any Hollywood A-lister to shame.

But over the last few months, things had completely derailed from my expectations.

He refused to let me touch him!

I have to figure out what's going on.

The day I walked in on my boyfriend screwing that blonde tramp, I dropped the homemade tiramisu right there on the floor—our two-year relationship smashed to bits, messier than the splattered cream.

I ducked into a bar, slamming back whiskey, when this guy in a sharp black suit sidles up, his voice smooth as silk laced with bourbon. I spat out, "Help me forget him," but ended up totally lost in the presidential suite. He backed me against the wall, tore open my blouse, his tongue circling my nipple before biting down hard, leaving me breathless. "You taste like candy, baby—tonight, I'm gonna eat you up."

But then my boyfriend FaceTimes, spots the guy behind me, and loses it, screaming, "Dad!"

I went ice-cold—my hookup was my boyfriend's stepdad? Even worse, this thirty-three-year-old powerhouse was Brooklyn's deadliest mob boss.

What began as a vengeful fling spiraled into a forbidden nightmare?

Have you ever been treated like a stand-in for your dead sibling by your own mother? I have.

Have you ever been murdered by your own mother? I have.

My name is Aira, and today is my sister Lily's birthday. It's also the anniversary of my death—the day the washing machine became my coffin.

"Why couldn't it have been you who died?"

After four long years, my mom finally got her wish.

My husband and parents wanted me dead. All because my sister was "dying."

They shoved a divorce agreement and an experimental surgery consent form at me.

I was supposed to be her donor.

But they didn't know I was the one actually dying.

Three days ago, they told me I had terminal bone cancer.

One month to live.

So when they threatened me into some back-alley surgery, I smiled.

I was already dying anyway.

Sebastian is dead.

And I'm the prime suspect.

I thought Lucy was the only one on my side, but there's always panic in her eyes. Black stockings showing up in my closet, red marks on my wrists I can't explain, texts sent from my phone that I never wrote...

The evidence keeps piling up, choking me.

My memory's slipping, the same broken nightmares on repeat. Strange perfume, cruel words, and the name "Leah" that won't leave my head.

Who is lying? Who's pulling the strings?

I can't tell what's real anymore. All I know is everyone's lying to me.

I need to find who's behind this before it destroys me.

I've been married to my husband Jake for three years. In that time, I've been pregnant twice.

But each time, I lost the baby.

What took my children wasn't a medical condition, but a painting.

A black bird, painted by Jake's ten-year-old blind brother, Billy.

My in-laws claimed he had the gift—a psychic born with sight beyond sight. And the black bird was an omen. It marked my baby as cursed, a threat to the family.

To save my second child, I got the best amniocentesis report money could buy, proving the baby had no genetic defects.

It happened again anyway.

At three in the morning, I woke to the agony of another miscarriage and stumbled to the studio door.

That's when I found out the truth.

My husband, Zachary, chose to save his sister-in-law right in front of the kidnappers.

The kidnapper pressed the gun to my temple and asked, "Choose your wife or your sister-in-law?"

Zachary didn't hesitate. "Let Valerie go," he said.

He actually chose to save his sister-in-law! In that moment, even the baby in my belly seemed to stop kicking.

Later, they locked me in the basement. Drugs to delay labor were pumped into my veins over and over. Zachary wanted to save the "firstborn son" status for his sister-in-law's child.

When warm blood finally soaked through my skirt, I dialed the number I knew by heart with shaking hands.

"Zachary," I whispered into the phone, "our child... can't wait any longer."

I never imagined that the most humiliating secret of my life would be laid bare in a flimsy tent in the middle of nowhere.

Even less did I imagine that the person witnessing my unraveling would be Sebastian. He’s the CEO of a top-tier conglomerate, my direct boss, and, most damningly, my ex’s stepfather.

A freak accident left us stranded in the jungle late at night. Inside that cramped, suffocating tent, the air felt scorching, almost unbearable. Worst of all, in my rush to leave, I’d forgotten to bring the medication that suppresses my “craving disorder.”

When that sickening desire surged through me like a tidal wave, when his body heat pressed against my back through his shirt, I could only bite my lip hard, teetering on the edge of shame and instinct.

“Mr. Blackwood, please… stay away from me.”

I died once.

In my last life, someone posted my photo on the company's anonymous forum, claiming I slept my way to the top.

The comment section exploded.

Colleagues whispered behind my back and pointed fingers.

A blurry video convinced everyone the woman in it was me.

I explained. I cried. I begged.

No one believed me.

The company forced me out. My parents kicked me out.

I walked to my death, condemned by everyone.

Then I opened my eyes.

Everything went back to the beginning.

The same post, the same accusation, the same man swearing in the comments he'd seen it all himself.

This time, I'm getting my revenge.

On my due date, my husband Russell locked me in an underground freezer at minus ten degrees.

The Pembroke family's unbreakable rule: the first-born male inherits the entire mafia empire. My sister-in-law Natasha and I were both pregnant, our due dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother's child was born first, Russell made this insane decision.

"My brother and Natasha's baby has to come first—this is what you owe them!" He ignored my desperate pleas and violent contractions, coldly shoving me into the freezer.

But that wasn't enough. They forcibly injected me with labor-delaying drugs. I curled up in agony on the freezing concrete floor, feeling my baby slowly slipping away, tears of despair streaming down my face.

My baby, Mommy is so sorry...

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the flight plunged from over thirty thousand feet in the air.

“Why is Elara dying on my stream?”

Sienna Vale laughed in front of half a million viewers while my heroine glitched on-screen, wearing the ring I designed and speaking the line I wrote.

Caleb didn’t ask if I was okay. He shoved the emergency laptop toward me and said, “Fix it before the investors panic.”

So I opened the live build.

But instead of saving his launch, I patched one line into the game credits:

Created by Maya Reed.

"Kiera Scott is a 21 years old single lady, she Lives alone since she graduated from high school. Sometimes her friends come around to visit her. Luckily enough for her, she's the only daughter of her family and very pampered. She's pretty... The perfect definition of beauty can be told alone by looking at her. She's loved by everyone in her neighborhood, works in a very good company and paying one loved by her colleagues. But! The only problem is her Boss.

He's Tibby Wilf. He is a sex freak, crazy, mean, extra arrogant. He hates being corrected. But Kiera keeps crushing on him.

He was a sex addict. He'd always scold her when she's wrong and not...till she got used to it.

Now she accidentally found him in the shower.

"you!!" he called as she turned back shocked to see her boss half naked.

"argh!" she screamed and shut her eyes closed

"what you doing here?"" she asked

"I should ask you that!" he fired back as she opened her eyes

'gosh...so hot' she gasped in her thoughts

"I'm hiding... please" she whispered as she walked closer to him

"hey... stay back" he hurriedly said as she staggered back

"argh!" she screamed as he pushed her back but unfortunately... his towels fell off his waist."

Warning : Matured contents.

"Fuck ," Keir moaned as he placed his hand on her head motioning her to reduce her pace as she was at the edge of making him loose his mind but she didn't stop rather she continued gagging on his manhood swiftly and at interval she would meet his eyes with a smile on her face.

"Damn," Keir moaned again this time loudly as he released into her mouth, watching her take all of him as she swallowed. He didn't know how they had gotten here but he was pleased, his parents had organized a get together with all their shareholders and as usual Octavia had suggested they go have their own meeting in his office.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Octavia Cosmo and Keir Hydra are childhood friends, they come to a compromise after being in a series of unhealthy relationships with their past partners to be in a friend's with benefits situation to satisfy their sexual urge.

They keep at it for some while till Octavia realize she might be in love with Keir when he informs her he wants to call off their agreement off as he is now in love.

Will she let him go or do the untold to keep their agreement permanent?

He Thought I'd Wait Forever. I Wore White for Someone Else.

Nora canceled the wedding venue on a Tuesday. The deposit was nonrefundable. She let it go.
Eight years she'd held that stretch of coast — the cliff, the white tent, the January date they circled and let slide every spring. She slid the ring off at the kitchen counter and dropped it in the drawer with the dead batteries and old takeout menus. It didn't feel like heartbreak. It felt like setting down something she'd carried too long.
Adrian would find out. Not tonight. He still thought her silence was a thing to be coaxed out of. He still thought she'd always be there.
She'd already decided she wouldn't. By the time he understood, she'd be on that coast in a white dress — and the man beside her wouldn't be him.

I suffered from a severe congenital heart defect.

And my mother, Jamie, had terminal bone cancer.

My family was not a happy one. It marked the third year since my father, Nelson, had openly and unapologetically betrayed their marriage.

That morning, my mother swallowed a handful of painkillers and forced herself to stand up from her wheelchair.

She asked her best friend, Zoey, who was also my attending physician, to forge a medical report.

Zoey trembled with anger, her tears dropping heavily onto the paper.

"Jamie, are you crazy? Your bones are being eaten away by cancer cells every single day. You're in so much pain you bang your head against the wall all night. Why would you fake a clean bill of health?"

"Do you think that bastard Nelson will change his mind and come back to you just because you pretend to be healthy?"

I thought I was the perfect wife and mother, until I heard my husband outside his office, laughing, calling me a "prison warden" and planning to use our daughter as cover while he ran off to Tuscany with his grad student.

Everything fell apart. Then my daughter, in front of everyone: "That's just our annoying nanny."

I tried to hold on to what was left of our family, but my daughter shoved me down the stairs. I lost the baby, and my husband just checked his watch while I bled out on the floor.

They locked me in and left for Italy.

Alone in the hospital, they told me I'd lost the baby and had "memory damage."

Now they're back, expecting the same obedient wife.

She's gone.

And I'm done loving them.

I used to be the nation's top lock-picking expert. I saved countless lives.

But I couldn't save my own daughter.

At the dock, two children were strapped to bombs.

The girl had less time—I should've saved her first.

But my husband Damien held a knife to his throat, forcing me to save the other one first.

His illegitimate son.

I compromised.

The moment I opened the lock, the kidnapper ripped off the girl's hood.

I never expected her to be Rosie.

My five-year-old daughter.

She looked at me.

Her lips moved, forming the word "Mommy."

Then the explosion tore through everything...

I thought that after twenty years with the Sterlings—even as an adopted child—I'd at least count as family. But the day they found their biological daughter Victoria, they announced they were throwing me out and planned to humiliate me at the family gathering. Based on what right?

Even more disgusting was how my almost-fiancé Blake immediately started fooling around with Victoria, eager to watch me get kicked to the curb!

When everyone was lining up to step on me, it was Alexander—the one I'm supposed to call "stepbrother"—who protected me. In his apartment, when he stood behind me gripping my hand as I chopped vegetables, his breath grazing my ear before he finally bent down to kiss me... my heartbeat went completely erratic.

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the hospital, the first thing he said? Accused me of faking it. Said I just wanted attention.

In that moment, my heart died too.

Later, I found out Vivian wasn't even sick.

She said "I don't feel well"—that's all it took. And he left my mother and me to die.

Called me a lunatic. In front of everyone. All for her.

I was ready to leave. For good. Then someone shattered my mother's ashes.

On the day I got engaged to the heir of an elite old-money family, my own birth mother spread vicious lies about me in front of the entire crowd. She claimed I’d lived a wildly promiscuous life while studying abroad, and had even secretly given birth to a stillborn child with no known father.
Afterwards, she took my hand and sobbed out an apology, saying she’d only wanted to test whether my fiancé truly loved me enough to stand by me. I was foolish enough to believe her, and drank the calming tea she’d personally handed me.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, everything was destroyed. I lay in my bedroom, disheveled and half-dressed, and the man beside me was none other than my younger sister’s boyfriend.
In the end, my fiancé married my sister. And I was mercilessly disowned and cast out by my own family.
But twenty years later, every single one of them would come to regret what they’d done.

“Smile, Natalie,” Callum whispered before he walked onstage.

So I smiled while he thanked another woman for the crisis plan I had written. I smiled when he pinned my grandmother’s sapphire brooch to her dress. I even smiled when his message came in, canceling our nineteenth appointment at the county clerk’s office.

Then I walked out with our unsigned marriage license papers in my purse and called the one CEO he hated most.

By the time Callum realized I wasn’t waiting anymore, I had already taken my name, my work, and my future back.

My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.

His words pierced through, "Five years, the punishment she earned."

The bankruptcy was fiction. The illness, theater.

All orchestrated because his stepdaughter suffered from depression, and I was her entertainment.

When the doctor finally spoke to me, "Days. You have only days."

I laughed.

The dying one had never been my father.

It had always been me.

My sister walked onstage wearing the medal for my stolen research.
Ethan stood beside her and mouthed, Don’t ruin this.
Last time, I listened. I lost my scholarship, my housing, my lab, and the only archive my mother left behind.

This time, I held up the U drive with the original files.
“If Sophie built it,” I said, “let her run the raw data.”

My Sister Wore My Medal

I saw a post on Reddit, "Urgent! How do I convince my wife to donate bone marrow to my mistress?"

I scoffed and typed back, "What a piece of shit."

Right after I hit send, my husband came home. He grasped my hand, his voice shaky: "You have leukemia... but it's okay, we found a donor."

His right eye twitched—he always did that when he lied.

Then I remembered the worst comment on that post, "Trick your wife into thinking she's the patient."

Life imitating the internet, apparently.

He wanted to harvest my bone marrow for someone else.

When I finally saw his mistress's face, my world fell apart.

I never thought his mistress would be her......

"Miss Smith, I think I can smell your scent... it's so womanly..."

I looked down at the boy hiding under the lectern, watching helplessly as he had his way with me right there in the classroom, while I had to pretend everything was normal...

My name is Catherine, the university math teacher. With my husband always away on business trips, at thirty years old, I was like a nun guarding that double bed, never satisfied. Slowly, I developed some strange habits... and became bolder...

The bell for the end of class had just rung, and teachers and students were flocking to the bathrooms in groups, chattering noisily outside.

In one of the bathroom stalls, I was panting, squatting... my black lace panties down around my ankles, my face flushed with ecstasy as I indulged...

BLURB

My breath hitched, my chest heaving as Salvatore's finger thrust into my pussy. I clenched my teeth, my fingers squeezing the bedsheets as I shamelessly parted my legs even wider.

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice was a low growl.

“No,” I breathed. “Faster…please,” I moaned loudly.

I knew Salvatore's and my attraction to each other was forbidden; he was the heir to a wealthy family, and I was just a maid in his house. But I have had an attraction to him since I met him and couldn't control it.

We both couldn't.


Lyra Whitman is from a poor home and has faced constant bullying in school. She and her mother finally moved away to a new city, where they her mother works as a maid for the Sinclair's, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the county.

Lyra cannot help but fall for their son, and she is surprised to see that he feels the same. Knowing the dangers of being together due to their different backgrounds, they are forced to navigate their relationship in secret.

Silver poisoning struck, and my mother's life hung by a thread.
I knelt and begged my partner Selene to use the 100,000 gold coins from our war spoils to purchase Moonlight Holy Water, but she coldly refused with a sneer: "An ordinary silver poison patient isn't worth wasting resources on." She then turned and spent 80,000 coins on a necklace for her male lover.
My mother died in my arms as I ground my teeth and swallowed my tears of blood.
But when the patrol came to collect the body, she finally discovered—the one sent to be buried deep in the mass grave wasn't my mother at all, but her own biological mother.
She had personally buried her own mom!

Fate chose her.
Power made him refuse.
Ruby was never the Luna Troy wanted.
The girl with silver eyes and no wolf the pack whispered about behind her back. The girl he rejected publicly on the day that was supposed to be their wedding and mating ceremony, choosing pride and power over the bond that tied them together.
Humiliated before the entire pack, Ruby walked away from the man destined to love her.
And when Troy realized too late that rejecting her had been the biggest mistake of his life, Ruby refused to come back.
So on the day Ruby was supposed to marry another and finally start over, he stole her from her own wedding and forced her back into his world—back into a marriage she never wanted.
Now trapped beside the man who broke her heart, Ruby is no longer the weak girl Troy remembers. The years apart changed her. Hardened her. And the power inside her has grown into something the entire werewolf world fears.
A power strong enough to stop wars.
Strong enough to make kings kneel.
Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of her.
The council sees her as a weapon. Rival Alphas see her as a prize. Enemies lurking in the shadows want her power for themselves. And Troy, the man who once shattered her, will burn down the world before he lets anyone take her again.
But forced proximity only reopens old wounds.
Because beneath Ruby’s anger still lingers the bond neither of them escaped. Beneath Troy’s cruelty hides obsession, regret, and a dangerous love that has only grown more possessive with time.
Now caught between revenge and desire, freedom and fate, Ruby must decide if Troy deserves a second chance…
—or if the Alpha who ruined her should finally lose everything.

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.
I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.
After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.
Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.
But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.
The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.
Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—
I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

In a sleek design world split between polished appearances and buried cruelty, Mara Ellison has spent years trapped behind a voice no one wanted to hear. While her family rewrites her illness and her fiancé speaks over her in the name of love, stolen records, public humiliation, and old betrayals force her to reclaim her life. Quiet but cutting, this is a story of emotional abuse, identity theft, and hard-won selfhood—framed by rain-soaked streets, hospital corridors, cold glass conference rooms, and a woman finally stepping into the light with her own voice.

The day college decisions came out, my parents bought my twin sister a Porsche.
It was my eighteenth birthday too. Nobody brought it up. I stood in the doorway in my diner uniform while the whole room sang her name.
That night the four of them went out to dinner to celebrate her. The car only sat four, so my father handed me a hundred dollars and told me to order myself something at home.
Four days later, six thousand four hundred dollars vanished from my account. Two years of washing dishes, gone to her sorority dues. My mother's name was on the account, so it wasn't even illegal.
I didn't scream and I didn't beg. I went upstairs and clicked Accept on the full ride to MIT that had been sitting in my inbox for three days.
Nobody in that house ever wanted me. So I booked a one-way ticket, cut myself out of the family photo, and left my key on the shoe rack.
I wasn't coming back. Not for graduation. Not for any of them.

Five years into living with my stepbrother Gideon, the scholarship girl he sponsored moved into our house.
To repay his "generosity," she made a habit of slipping into his bed at night. By day, she took it upon herself to "fix" my antisocial, withdrawn personality.
Three days before St. George Prep's graduation ceremony, she brought me a glass of juice wearing that nauseating sugar-sweet smile.
"You know, Charlotte, your peanut allergy is probably psychosomatic. You just need some exposure therapy. Let me help you get over it."
That night, my throat closed completely. She'd deliberately laced my drink with concentrated peanut extract.
I convulsed on the cold hardwood floor, vision tunneling as oxygen fled my lungs.
In the last second before darkness swallowed me whole, I clawed desperately toward the half-open door.
Standing in the hallway were my boyfriend Dylan and my stepbrother Gideon.
They simply watched me suffocate. Then Gideon calmly reached out and shut the door.
I died from anaphylactic shock.
Three months later, as a ghost tethered to this world, I watched her stride onto Stanford's campus. Wearing my clothes. Carrying my acceptance letter. Burning through my trust fund.
Through the crowd, I saw Gideon—my ice-cold, unreachable stepbrother—gently cradle her face and press his lips to hers.
Then I gasped awake.
I was back. Three days before graduation.

A horrific car crash left me paralyzed.
The doctors said I'd never walk again. With no family left, my Aunt Martha and Uncle Thomas took me to their isolated farmhouse.
They cared for me, promising their treatments would help me walk again. After everything I'd been through, I thought I'd finally found safety.
Until today, when the feeling in my legs suddenly came back—but something told me not to tell them.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

I am a hero. The saint's husband.
A country boy chosen by the temple.
I fight, I fight, I fight.
All for the saint, for the temple.
But it wasn't until I was drained of blood and dying on the altar that I finally heard clearly what the saint and her childhood sweetheart were saying:
"If you become a hero and marry the saint, you'll have to surrender your soul to the temple. I don't want you to lose your soul."
"Then let's just find some country boy to be the hero. It won't matter if he dies."
Oh, so that's how it is.
You should have said so earlier.
I can defeat the Demon Lord just fine without the saint.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the wedding ceremony.
This time, someone else should be on the altar.

The chieftainess returned from the poisonous fog with a swollen belly.
She announced that she carried the child of a god—a child who would bring hope to the entire base.
Only I knew that what she bore was no divine offspring, but a demon that would devour every soul in the base.
Because in my previous life, I was the one it had gnawed to death, alive...

I thought love was enough.
I thought saving the Ember Claw Pack with everything I had—my heart, my loyalty, even my body—meant something. It led to a Moon Ceremony… and a marriage to Alpha William, the man I gave my soul to.
But love doesn’t protect you from betrayal.
Especially not when the one he truly wanted was never me.
I was glowing with the joy of carrying our pup when I walked in on him—holding her.
Quinn.
The fated mate everyone believed to be dead. Alive. Back. In his arms.
And me? Just the mistake he settled for.
"I only married you out of gratitude," he said, barely meeting my eyes.
Then, turning to Quinn with a softness I never got, he added, "If she hadn’t sold her ancestral land to save the pack, I would’ve never completed the Moon Ceremony with her."
And the final blow?
"So what if she found out? I’ll just say I thought she was you that night we slept together."
That night—The one I thought meant everything.
But it didn’t end with him.
His mother pointed her finger at m

I once believed that if I was obedient enough, my birth family would finally love me. Instead, they gave everything to Anna, the fake heiress—my competition spot, my reputation, even my kidney.
Then I opened my eyes and returned to the year it all began.
This time, I won’t beg. I won’t yield. My achievements, my dignity, and my life belong to me.
When everyone called me vicious, Damian Sterling draped his jacket over my shoulders and asked in a low voice, “Am I an outsider?”
I leaned into him and smiled. “Of course not.”
But soon I discovered he was being slowly poisoned—and the culprit might be someone closest to him. Worse, the truth behind my death in my previous life may be darker than I ever imagined…

1

At 17, I saved William from the black market.
At 22, he crossed half the globe to marry me with two million dollars.
I built his empire for him, turning him into the biggest arms dealer in the Americas.
Then Karen appeared, and our seven years turned to ashes.
I finally saw the truth:
The roses he gave me were the ones Karen had rejected.
His so-called love was nothing but a hypocritical act for money.
To him, I was just a prop for show, a tool for his business, and a machine for sex.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

The day my mother succumbed to complications during childbirth, her younger sister, Vanessa, wed my father.

Fifteen years later, I beheld my husband accompanying Vanessa as she tried on seductive lingerie.

In that moment, I understood—what she truly coveted was never my father, but rather all that my mother and I shared.

My mother perished during childbirth, a casualty of an illicit affair.

I vowed not to repeat that tragic cycle.

Then I returned home, removed my wedding ring, and left behind the divorce papers.

I used to be the most envied female on the continent. Three mates: werewolf Alpha Kael, vampire lord Dorian, elven ranger Seth. All of them mine.
Then a half-elf drifter named Ayla showed up, and everything I had started belonging to her instead, one piece at a time.
Kael once pulled a fang from his own mouth to make me a necklace. The day it broke, he was too busy licking another female's cut finger to notice.
Dorian spent two weeks brewing me blood wine. Then he handed the cup straight to her, because apparently I "looked healthy enough to go without."
Seth carved me a charm from sacred elven wood. I watched her face take shape under his knife instead of mine.
They kept telling me I needed to grow up. So when a beast's poison was spreading through my body, and I blew the whistle they swore would bring them running no matter what—
No one came.
Three years later, I walked back into their world on a Siren prince's arm.
This time, they're the ones begging for my forgiveness.